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Alas! the Beijing-Washington connection became infinitely more complicated when one, probably undertrained as has been the case in the past, Chinese fighter pilot found his speed-of-sound aircraft couldn’t pace the lumbering American spycraft and he crashed into it.
For Beijing, the prestige of China’s increasingly harassed leadership was put on the line: how to explain the whole episode to an increasingly restless population.
For Washington, the problem of what to do about weapons deliveries to Taiwan became all the more difficult.
Inside the Beltway, the discussion over arms for Taiwan has been — behind closed doors — a relatively technical one. What does Taiwan need to maintain its defense capabilities against the growing strength of Mainland forces? What does Taipei need to assure that the decision on its future link to China would be made peacefully?
The general consensus has been that Taiwan does not face an imminent threat. The missile batteries that Beijing is building on the Fukien coast will one day, along with its increasing array of state-of-the-art fighter planes from the Russians, cost the Taiwanese control of the airways. But that is down the road apiece. There is the possibility of a naval blockade of one of the top 15 trading nations of the world. A batch of new diesel submarines might patch that crack.
Of course, still further down the way, there is the question of a missiles defense system including the Aegis missiles detroyers, perhaps linked to the proposed regional missile defense that Washington is studying for Japan, and possibly, even Korea [although for the moment, at least, Seoul has opted out].
In fact, the question of Aegis destroyers for Taiwan has been a red herring. Even should they be approved, delivery might be almost a decade away. Or as with the F-16 fighters given under Poppa Bush’s Administration, their electronics might be “dumbed down”.
Neither Beijing nor Washington wants an escalation of the Hainan Incident. But a “solution” that appears to be wrapped up with the issue of the Taiwan arms could be catastrophic.
We can only guess at what is going on behind the screens in Beijing. We do know there are huge problems — the shadow of a U.S. economic downturn over an economy already in alarmingly high government deficits, hawkish younger military, a succession coming for President and Communist Party Chief Jiang Zemin with the Party history of violence, growing civil strife, etc.
In Washington, there is more transparency. But the calculations are just as Byzantine: Dubya made much of his intent to put relations with China on a more solid footing than what most of his advisers have deemed inadequacies of the Clinton Administration. With a half dozen other hard-line policies — from his tax proposals to the Balkans commitment — already in seeming retreat, will and can the Taiwan arms question be sorted out without reference to these other issues far afield?
Some Chinese press reporting from the U.S. in the continuing avalanche of propaganda about Taiwan has claimed that Qian Qichen, during the first contact by Dubya with high Chinese officials last month, got a commitment from the President not to send the Aegis destroyers. So, it now becomes gospel from Beijing that should Taiwan be refused the Aegis destroyers, it would have been because of pressure from the Mainland.
All this leads to an important if sometimes forgotten element in U.S. policy — perception rather than reality. A U.S. program to maintain Taiwan’s bargaining position by supplying arms of only a defensive character to enable it to meet any Mainland armed threat might not be the conclusive element in a policy intended to maintain Taipei’s bargaining position.
Taiwan’s stability is fragile. As the often boorishly outspoken Vice Pres. Annette Lu told a recent meeting, the island’s regime faces five crises — confidence, ethics, loyalty, finance and national security. She alluded to party bickering since her own DPP took over the presidency last year, the growing exposure of corruption, the fear of the size and growing strength of the Mainland military, the growing investment by Taiwanese capital on the Mainland with the leverage that provides Beijing and declining foreign exchange reserves.
If the perception were created by a combination of the inability of Washington to lay out a line on Taiwan in a clear and forceful manner and a barrage of propaganda from Beijing claiming “victory” in persuading the US to deny Taiwan adequate arms, a new element of insecurity would hit Taiwan. Some of us remember that it was the cutback in US arms deliveries and Washington’s support that was a large element in the collapse of the Saigon government in 1975.
Sol W. Sanders is an Asian specialist with more than 25 years in the region, and a former correspondent for Business Week, U.S. News & World Report and United Press International.
He writes weekly for World Tribune.com.